Or that’s what you
might think if you only know yoga through the lens of our capitalist,
body-shaming, fitness-obsessed American culture.

Seeing magazine covers
of thin, wealthy, White, cis women talking about “how to get yoga abs”
certainly isn’t appealing for those of us working to eradicate inequality and
oppression – nor does it make us want to give the practice a try.

This is certainly not
feminist. Heterosexism, cultural appropriation, racism, inaccessibility,
profit-driving, gender policing, and body shaming are not feminist values; in
fact, recognizing and fighting against them are a necessary part of an intersectional
feminist movement. And yet, these are all very present elements of
yoga in America today.

They’re also completely
counter to the values of the practice.

Feminism and yoga are
in no way contradictory. In fact, despite all of this, I would argue that yoga
and feminism are authentically bound. Despite the destruction that Western
patriarchal capitalism has had on yoga practice and culture, yoga holds
subversive, feminist elements that can strengthen our movement.

So what role can yoga
play in the feminist movement? How does yoga challenge capitalism and systemic
oppression, or strengthen our ability to be agents of social change?

What is so feminist
about yoga?

Here are four things
to consider.

1. Yoga changes our relationships to our bodies.

“By being physical
without a focus on weight-loss or competition, yoga can help you become a
witness to negative self-talk that comes from years of misguided influence of
the media and other cultural forces. Despite what Instagram might look like,
yoga can help you reject attachment to cultural beauty standards so that you
can feel comfortable in your own skin.” —Veronica Rottman, feminist yoga instructor and doula

Although yoga has only
in the last several decades begun to occupy a visible place in the American
mainstream, yoga has been practiced globally for over 5,000 years. The
word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root “yuj” meaning “to
yoke,” or “to come together,” “to unite.”

The union of the mind
and body is at the core of yoga and is certainly no small goal. We tend to view
the mind and body as separate things in our culture, and we promote division by
prioritizing one over the other.

Certainly, living
under an endless amount of body-shaming, victim-blaming, and social pressures
around sex and body image creates a context for toxic relationships with our
bodies.

Feminism takes up this
cause by examining, deconstructing, and challenging these norms. Yoga takes up
the cause through the practice of embodiment. This process means connecting and
reconnecting and coming into our bodies just by noticing what we’re feeling
without judgment or any attempt to control or change those physical and
emotional experiences.

Our bodies hold our
life stories. They hold our grief and trauma, our anxiety, our sadness, our
joy, our histories. And while we live in an incredibly cognitive world, we can’t
always verbally explain what’s happened and is happening in our bodies. In
fact, most of the time, we don’t even notice or care. The division of our
“self” from our bodies allows the space for constant negative self-talk,
criticism, and punishment of our bodies for just being what they are.

In a world that
teaches us to constantly try to “take control” over ourselves – our bodies, our
weight, our health, our emotions – it can be a radically feminist experience to
learn to simply hold the space
for our bodies to feel whatever sensations arise, to allow
ourselves to carry what our bodies want to hold onto, to let go of what they no
longer need, to breathe in their history and each passing moment.

This is what yoga
teaches – to be in our bodies, fully, and to love the movement and sensations
and emotions, with all their complexity.

2. Yoga can help us heal from trauma.

“Feminism offered
the ideological tools to examine my tortured relationship with my body
systematically and deconstruct mediated images. Yoga provided the practice that
rooted the things feminism had taught me. It is one thing to intellectualize
self-love and acceptance, it’s another to embody it.” —Melanie Klein,
academic, feminist, yoga instructor

To live in this world
as a person of marginalized identities is to experience trauma.

As I’ve discussed in
past posts, oppression is immensely bad for your mental health.
Healing from the systemic and interpersonal violence that one endures in this
world, then, must hold a central role in our movement.

We cannot build a
movement of strength without acknowledging the daily trauma (big T and little
t) that has been carried out in the name of white supremacy,
patriarchy, capitalism, and other systems of oppression.

When it comes to
healing from trauma, both yoga and feminism play important and overlapping
roles. While feminism gives us the framework for letting go of internalized
shame, yoga grounds that healing in our bodies.

Increasing research shows that
because we hold trauma in our bodies, yoga often gives us the tools we need to
release it, to let go of the weight and conditioning and to find a new strength
for moving through the world.

This process of
healing and building strength and power is such a central part of our work. To
be a part of this movement is to acknowledge the trauma inherent in living
under and alongside rape culture, police violence
in Black communities, violence against abortion providers, the
prison industrial complex, gender and sexuality-based hate crimes, and the list
goes on and on.

We are witnesses to
this trauma, and we are survivors of it. The practice of being present to it,
to being awake, and to healing are central to yoga, and central to our social
justice work.

The practice of yoga
is not only healing – its philosophy also speaks to our social justice goals:
The ultimate goal of yoga is liberation.

Yogic philosophy also
holds values such as ahimsa, or nonviolence, and kharma,
or selfless action, at its core. Yoga, like feminism, seeks to dismantle and
deconstruct cultural notions and belief systems through critical thinking, or
kind questioning.

Yoga, then, can teach
us not only to let go of harmful and rigid constructions of self as we heal
from trauma, but fills that space with a framework grounded in liberation and
taking action.

3. Yoga helps us cultivate being here now.

“The practice of yoga
only requires us to act and to be attentive to our actions.” —T.K.V Desikachar

Yoga isn’t just about
moving your body. Sure, we make cool shapes in a yoga class, but the practice
is about so much more than that. In fact, yoga has eight limbs, only one of which includes the physical
poses (asana). Other limbs focus on ethical standards, self-discipline,
the steps of meditation, as well as connecting to our breath and to the present
moment.

Yoga teaches us to sit
in the present moment, to notice every sound, sensation, action – and to notice
these things without judgment. This is also called mindfulness, and it is an
incredibly challenging thing to practice.

It means being here
now, in this moment, and facing whatever we may be trying to avoid by
distracting ourselves with work, substances, or television. It also means truly
seeing the people and other living beings around us. Seeing them not as
separate from us, but as deeply connected.

While capitalism and
oppression teach us to strive to “get ahead,” to compete and compare and
criticize ourselves and others, yoga teaches us to accept ourselves and those
around us. While capitalism values productivity and efficiency, yoga values
slowing down and inaction. While capitalism teaches us we don’t own our own
bodies or our labor or our time, to always be thinking of the future as a way
to get through the long days of work, yoga teaches us that no one can “own” our
time or bodies, and that the only way to truly live is to be fully awake to
each and every moment.

While capitalism and
systemic oppression serve to isolate us from one other and to separate us from
our time, our labor, ourselves, and everything around us, yoga teaches us to
connect with the present moment, and to the beings around us.

When we take action as
a collective, as beings who are deeply connected to one another, we are better
able to position the values of empowerment, equality, and empathy at the center
of our work – and become a stronger feminist movement because of it.

4. Yoga teaches both acceptance and change.

“Yoga teaches us to
cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.” —B.K.S. Iyengar

When I first started
studying yoga, I remember having a really hard time with that word – acceptance. Why
would I work toward a place of acceptance when there is so much in this world
that needs changing? Isn’t acceptance of each moment counter-revolutionary?

While it can be
difficult to hold both ideas at once, it’s possible (and even radical!) both to
accept each moment as it is, while rejecting the oppressive violence around us
and taking action to enact change.

We can hold that each
moment is true and real and authentic while wanting events of those moments to
be different. We can hold that we are who we are and where we are, while
wanting both of those things to be better.

But we have to start
where we are.

I think one of the
hardest parts of being an activist is that change is so. frustratingly. slow.

And in a world where waking
up to the truth of the terror happening around you can easily set you up for a
lifetime of endless anger and frustration, it’s absolutely necessary that we
make space for connection and joy.

It’s a long road to
change, and burn-out is all
too common in our movement. Yoga teaches us how to do just that – to
be both patient and demanding for the necessary revolution; to accept and be
grateful for each small change as we remain rooted in our larger vision and
thirst for deeper shifts; to be awake to the beauty and power offered in each
breath and moment, while challenging the emptiness, alienation, self-blame, and
disconnection upon which oppression and marginalization thrives.

We need and deserve to
see the beauty around us amidst the violence. By doing this, we remind
ourselves what kind of world we’re fighting for, and keep that fire for justice
burning.

Yoga also teaches us
how to hold humility and an openness to learning, especially when it comes to
learning from the wisdom of both yoga and feminism’s long history.

In our work, it’s
essential to be open to learning from our history – from both the narrow,
destructive past of White feminism’s exclusionary vision to the infinite wisdom
of radical,
intersectional feminists.

This awareness,
gratitude, and openness grounds us in the wisdom of the past while teaching us
to create an intention for the present and future.

While I firmly believe
that yoga can hold a major role in our movement, this is by no means a call to
embrace yoga culture as it exists in America.

There are real
problems with the way yoga in this country is practiced and with whom it
excludes. But I don’t think this means rejecting yoga completely. Instead, I
would argue that the qualities of yoga that reaffirm marginalization and
exclusion are definitively un-yoga. They’re counter to yogic philosophy.

As we work to make our
studios and practices more accessible, inclusive, and critical of the racist,
heterosexist, cissexist, and cultural appropriative elements of yoga, we can
also work to integrate the elements of yoga we find most beneficial into our
movement.

I believe that yoga
can only make us stronger activists – radicals with more energy, gratitude,
presence, and deeper connections to one another and our planet.

While feminism
continues to be our ideological framework for understanding and critiquing
oppression, yoga can be the tool to ground us in that framework, to practice
the awareness, compassion, and self-love that will create the space for us to
be agents of change.

Just start where you
are.

About the author

Laura Kacere is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism and is a therapist, yoga teacher, and pit bull mama living in Chicago. Laura moved to Chicago to study mental health after years of reproductive rights activism in Washington, D.C. She is passionate about working at the intersection of feminism, mental health, and the body. Follow her on Twitter @Feminist_Oryx.Read her articles here.

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